Acting on Information as a result of a Robbery Investigation, a joint Police Military team went to Halls Delight Hill, St. Andrew at about 6:30 am Monday, July 1^st.

On approach­ing an area in the com­mu­ni­ty the par­ty was fired on by a group of men. The fire was returned and two men were shot and killed accord­ing to law-enforce­ment cources.

Three 9 mm pis­tols along with sev­er­al rounds of ammu­ni­tion was recov­ered from their bodies

The men were pro­nounced dead at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

I do not begin to sug­gest to have all the answers to Jamaica’s metas­ta­siz­ing kill cul­ture, but I do recall that when there used to be hang­ings things were a lot dif­fer­ent.
Do you remem­ber when [Wanda used to bruk the fuc­ka dem neck]? I was a kid but I remem­ber.
But just like how we are still using a Constitution which was drawn up after our so-called Independence from Britain, while we are still pledg­ing alle­giance to Britain, we are still stuck try­ing to make our way as a coun­try using the direc­tives and cus­toms of our oppres­sors today.

The last exe­cu­tion in Jamaica was on the 18^th of February 1988, when Nathan Foster and Stanford Dinnal were hanged for mur­der. Since then Jamaica which is a part of the British Commonwealth has declared a mora­to­ri­um on Capital pun­ish­ment, effec­tive­ly fill­ing up the Island’s jails with mur­der­ous scum­bags who should be sent to meet their mak­ers and cre­at­ing many more who are con­fi­dent that they will nev­er see a hang­man’s noose.
According to [cap​i​talpun​ish​men​tuk​.org] The British Commonwealth com­pris­es of 54 mem­ber coun­tries (Zimbabwe with­drew in 2003 hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pend­ed), with a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of near­ly 1.8 bil­lion peo­ple, rep­re­sent­ing some 30% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion.|
It is impor­tant that we rec­on­cile the fact that pow­er­ful nations like the United States as a Federal enti­ty, France and oth­ers, though not part of the British empire have not signed on to any mora­to­ri­um to end cap­i­tal punishment. 

At a glance :

With the excep­tion of Australia, all of the above-named coun­tries are poor coun­tries with black and brown pop­u­la­tions.
Britain as the for­mer head oppres­sor and lord almighty of all the afore­men­tioned nations and it’s close sur­ro­gate Australia can eas­i­ly afford not to have cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the soci­eties.
They have devel­oped soci­eties with not a lot of guns lying around and not an inor­di­nate amount of crime either.
Jamaica as a small depen­dent fol­low­er nation is not even strong enough to write a con­sti­tu­tion which allows Jamaicans to pledge loy­al­ty and alle­giance to Jamaica.
Instead, our peo­ple are pledg­ing alle­giance to a for­eign pow­er which does not have their inter­est at heart.
Just ask the Windrush gen­er­a­tion and the hun­dreds of peo­ple who left Jamaica as babies who have found them­selves uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped back unto a Jamaica they do not know because they may have com­mit­ted an offense.
Jamaica derives zero ben­e­fits from Britain, yet she con­tin­ues in slav­ish servi­tude to [our sov­er­eign lady the queen]sic.

Jamaica is not allowed to hang it’s mur­der­ers so it may send a strong mes­sage to oth­ers who would walk the same path. But as in every­thing else, Jamaican lead­ers are com­plete­ly def­er­en­tial to the off­springs of our ances­tral oppres­sors. So when they tell us we should not hang mur­der­ers we stopped even though our soci­ety was over­flow­ing with mur­ders and oth­er vio­lent crimes.
Now they have wormed their way into Jamaica’s enforce­ment sys­tem and is affect­ing how our police are able to do their jobs a‑la INDECOM and the pha­lanx of crim­i­nal rights lob­by which has all but tak­en over and dom­i­nat­ed the leg­isla­tive process.
Still, the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship is bliss­ful­ly igno­rant that the sup­posed help they are offer­ing Jamaica is a Trojan horse which wreck­ing our coun­try, because they are crime enhanc­ing help.
Many of the Island’s politi­cians have bloody hands, oth­ers have dirt on their hands, hard­ly any of the 63 at the par­lia­men­tary lev­el have clean hands, and so the cul­ture of crim­i­nal­i­ty which has been metas­ta­siz­ing over the last three decades works per­fect­ly for them.
On the one hand, they are able to seem like they are doing some­thing about the ram­pant and exis­ten­tial crim­i­nal­i­ty by bring­ing in the white man to tell them what to do, even though they have seen the signs and the data that their so-called help is a Trojan horse which is cre­at­ing and breed­ing mur­der­ers.
A crime-rid­den failed state Jamaica, is a state for­ev­er depen­dent on them for loans.
Let me be clear, nei­ther The United States nor Great Britain has any oth­er nation’s inter­est at heart except their own. (Outside of the apartheid state of Israel of course).
Nations do not have friends, they have inter­est, Jamaica does not have oil or any pre­cious met­al and the major­i­ty of its peo­ple are black and brown.
The soon­er Jamaicans rec­og­nize this the bet­ter off they will be.

On that basis, the INDECOM Act must be repealed and the hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars wast­ed each year on that dark hole must be real­lo­cat­ed to our law enforce­ment efforts.
There are no Jamaicans inside Britain telling them how to run their gov­ern­ment and there should be no Brit in our coun­try telling us how to run ours.
The litany of crim­i­nal rights groups now con­verged and oper­at­ing in our coun­try must be side­lined and shown the way to one or both of the two International Airports forth­with.
Our police must be empow­ered to do their jobs with clear rules of engage­ment.
How in God’s name can crim­i­nals fire at police offi­cers from a vehi­cle, the police cor­rect­ly returned the fire and are charged with a crime, con­vict­ed and sent to prison for killing some­one in that vehi­cle. Convicted for doing exact­ly what they were sup­posed to do?
These are the signs of a failed soci­ety. One infect­ed to the core, dying slow­ly like a body ter­mi­nal­ly tak­en over by can­cer.
The soci­ety too, must be hauled by its incred­i­bly stu­pid ass into the real­i­ty that crime is bad for every­one.
The leg­isla­tive and Judicial arm of the Government must stop being an ene­my of the rule of law and embark on a trans­for­ma­tion­al process of heal­ing and ref­or­ma­tion with a view to restor­ing our coun­try to its for­mer peace and tran­quil­i­ty.
Jamaica can and must gov­ern her­self. We should no longer allow for­eign­ers to tell us how to do so. We can­not tell any­one how to run their coun­try, no one should tell us how to run ours.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

Correctional Officer Mr. Traves Anderson, 25 years old of Carawina Avenue, Pembrook Hall, Kingston 20 was report­ed­ly gunned down in Pembroke Hall Saint Andrew yes­ter­day Sunday, June 23, 2019, about 2:45pm.
Mister Anderson was report­ed­ly remov­ing items from a vehi­cle he had in his pos­ses­sion which was bro­ken into the night before.
While await­ing a tow-truck, he was pounced upon by men trav­el­ing in a sil­ver motor car who opened fire at him hit­ting him mul­ti­ple times in the head and upper body. 

It Is believed that the offi­cer returned fire, how­ev­er, the men man­aged to relieve him of a Browning 9mm pis­tol prop­er­ty of the Department of Correctional before mak­ing good their escape. 

Jay Connor

Maybe racist rhetoric on social media isn’t real­ly your thing, but 72 Philadelphia police offi­cers just got yanked off the street and reas­signed to admin­is­tra­tive duty because it’s appar­ent­ly theirs.

The Philadelphia Police Department has tak­en 72 offi­cers off street duty as it con­tin­ues to inves­ti­gate scores of racist or offen­sive Facebook posts alleged­ly made by city cops — the largest num­ber of offi­cers placed on desk duty at one time in recent his­to­ry, Commissioner Richard Ross said Wednesday.

During a news con­fer­ence at Police Headquarters near­ly three weeks after advo­cates pub­lished a data­base cat­a­loging the posts, Ross said that although no offi­cers had yet been dis­ci­plined, he expect­ed dozens to face inter­nal con­se­quences and at least sev­er­al to be fired. He did not iden­ti­fy any by name. 

“We are equal­ly dis­gust­ed by many of the posts that you saw, and that in many cas­es the rest of the nation saw,” Ross said. After not­ing that the alleged behav­ior of his police force “makes me sick,” he added: “We are in a posi­tion to know better.”

As we report­ed ear­li­er this month, a data­base cre­at­ed by the Plain View Project revealed approx­i­mate­ly 200,000 inci­dents of alleged mis­con­duct by 85,000 police offi­cers through­out the coun­try, includ­ing their social media pro­files and behav­ior. But as cities across the nation have launched inves­ti­ga­tions into the Plain View Project’s find­ings, Philadelphia isn’t the only city unnerved by what it’s dis­cov­ered. CNN reports that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner pro­hib­it­ed 22 offi­cers from bring­ing their cas­es to the Circuit Attorney’s Office, refus­ing to pros­e­cute any case where these offi­cers serve as pri­ma­ry witnesses.

“When a police officer’s integri­ty is com­pro­mised in this man­ner, it com­pro­mis­es the entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and our over­all abil­i­ty to pur­sue jus­tice,” Gardner said in a state­ment. “After care­ful exam­i­na­tion of the under­ly­ing bias con­tained in those social media posts, we have con­clud­ed that this bias would like­ly influ­ence an officer’s abil­i­ty to per­form his or her duties in an unbi­ased manner.”With so many police inter­ac­tions esca­lat­ing unnec­es­sar­i­ly and con­clud­ing in vio­lence or death, hope­ful­ly, this data­base serves as a wake-up call for cities to hold their police depart­ments account­able. Because it’s clear there’s a con­nec­tion between actions and ide­olo­gies, but we didn’t need a data­base to tell us what we already knew.
This sto­ry first appeared here:
https://www.the​root​.com/​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​y​a​n​k​s​-​7​2​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​s​-​o​f​f​-​t​h​e​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​-​b​e​-​1​8​3​5​6​8​9​196

I have always won­dered what exact­ly it was that impressed Jamaican author­i­ties about Mark Shields, Les Green and the oth­er British Cops who emi­grat­ed to Jamaica, sup­pos­ed­ly to help trans­form the Jamaica Constabulary Force into a mod­ern police force, or so they say.
The truth of the mat­ter is that from what we have heard, Mark Shields got him­self a Jamaican bride, secured him­self a secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny in our coun­try, or so we are told.
Never mind that even if they do not stay, they end up spend­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time before leav­ing.
And what is it about these white men going out to the Colonies being referred to as [Expatriates] while Black peo­ple head­ing to England are mere [immi­grants]? So you nev­er thought about that? Okay, then it’s just me.
None of those [immi­grant cops]have fas­ci­nat­ed me more than Hamish Campbell who arrived as over­seer and sec­ond in charge of INDECOM.
And I will talk a lit­tle about Hamish Campbell a lit­tle lat­er but I want­ed to just high­light some things which Les Green said about the local cops he was forced to encounter out there in the colony.
We all know how the Colonial mas­ters view the lazy sub-human peas­antry. But I rather pre­fer to let Les Green speak for Les Green and you can decide if he even both­ered to hide the old tropes and big­ot­ed attack lines which they have always used when they speak of black peo­ple.
Never mind that at the time the unin­tel­li­gent Jamaican media gob­bled it up and saw noth­ing unsa­vory or dis­gust­ing­ly offen­sive in those tropes.
Instead, they used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pile on the police, their black coun­try­men and women.

Said Green: “When I first went there, the foren­sic capa­bil­i­ty was very poor and inef­fec­tive. There it still takes up to two years to get DNA results, unlike in the UK where you can get them in two days.“He added: “In Jamaica, there is noth­ing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send some­one out to take a state­ment and they would do it imme­di­ate­ly. There, I could send some­one out for weeks on end and even­tu­al­ly they would come back with a state­ment. “If a pret­ty girl walks past, they will look at the pret­ty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomor­row, always anoth­er time to do some­thing. There’s always a drink or a pret­ty woman to dis­tract them.” Green, is cred­it­ed with bring­ing about sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments to Jamaica’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cides, described his eight-year tenure as frus­trat­ing because of the lev­el of vio­lence and weak sys­tems of inves­ti­ga­tion. (Gleaner)

I do share Les Green’s frus­tra­tion with the colonists after all, why would­n’t he be annoyed at the time? They shook us from the Queen’s broke and des­ti­tute frock-tails over 57 years ago. Battered and in sham­bles after the blitzkrieg of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, England want­ed some­one to give her hand­outs, instead of being respon­si­ble for any­one.
Since then, we haven’t man­aged to stand on our own, we still insist on call­ing her “our sov­er­eign lady”, even though I can­not imag­ine why? We refuse to write a con­sti­tu­tion which demon­strates that we can gov­ern our­selves with­out depend­ing on the British to medi­ate our dis­putes, and deter­mine our most seri­ous crim­i­nal cas­es.
What we have demon­strat­ed, is that when the rub­ber meets the road we can­not trust our­selves to decide on our own with­out “Massa”, decid­ing for us.
Green’s broad­side was the typ­i­cal racist trope of the lazy, over­sexed blacks who have no intel­li­gence or sense of urgency. Unfortunately for the politi­cians and media, couched in his insults was the lan­guage which spoke to their inad­e­qua­cies as well but it com­plete­ly went over their heads and they curt­sied, bowed and agreed with “Massa”.

I had one slight con­cern about Les Green’s com­ments at the time and still to this day I still have those con­cerns. You know out­side the Overseer/​Natives thing he had going on there.
When Les Green said the fol­low­ing, did he think that because we are back­ward natives,[sic] we did not know what goes on in drea­ry bleak Old England?

“In Jamaica, there is noth­ing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send some­one out to take a state­ment and they would do it imme­di­ate­ly. There, I could send some­one out for weeks on end and even­tu­al­ly they would come back with a state­ment. “If a pret­ty girl walks past, they will look at the pret­ty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomor­row, always anoth­er time to do some­thing. There’s always a drink or a pret­ty woman to dis­tract them.”
Wait just a minute there, accord­ing to…
(https://whathappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2014/04/a‑biography-of-hamish-campbell-man_28.html
Hamish Campbell the [British Immigrant] inves­ti­gat­ing our police offi­cers was actu­al­ly the lead offi­cer in a mur­der case in which evi­dence was alleged­ly plant­ed in order to gain convictions.

Hamish Campbell — was the (IO) Investigating Officer- placed in charge of the day-to-day inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in 1999. He was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the arrest and charg­ing of Barry Bulsara, known also as ‘Barry George’, with the mur­der of Dando. Bulsara was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for mur­der­ing Jill Dando but sub­se­quent­ly acquit­ted, sev­en years lat­er, on appeal.
Prior to the appoint­ment of Moore and Campbell to run the case, the inves­ti­ga­tion had found noth­ing of inter­est, despite over 7 months on the case. The Met had thou­sands of reg­is­tered infor­mants. Not one of them had come up with any infor­ma­tion at all about who might have killed Jill Dando and why. A reward of £250,000 for infor­ma­tion (about £½ mil­lion today) had pro­duced noth­ing. Operation Oxborough had inter­viewed in depth Dando’s fam­i­ly, friends, lovers (of whom there had been many) and col­leagues. As Gillard and Flynn cor­rect­ly observed in their book (p. 428), “The mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion was at an impasse”. Then Campbell took over.
The only foren­sic evi­dence against Bulsara was a speck of firearms residue said to have been ‘found’ in his coat pock­et. Hamish Campbell appeared on Crimewatch to rein­force in the public’s mind that it was an obses­sive lon­er they were look­ing for. He asked for the public’s help in iden­ti­fy­ing such a per­son.
It was a full 15 days after the Cecil Gee coat was seized that it was tak­en to a Mr Robin Keeley of the Forensic Science Service on 2 May 2000. That 15-day delay has nev­er been explained. He then found a sin­gle speck of firearm residue inside the left pock­et, and said that it was con­sis­tent with the type of firearm used to kill Dando. 
D. Cliff Richard, a friend of Jill Dando, was inter­viewed ‘a num­ber of times’ by the police inves­ti­gat­ing Dando’s killing.
Barry Bulsara spent 7 years in prison before he was released after win­ning his sec­ond appeal.

The pat­tern was evi­dent in an ear­li­er case this time it was the case of Ira Thomas a black man, who was quote [fit­ted up with a mur­der charge]
The Appeal Court heard the appeal on 13 February 1992 and quashed the jury’s major­i­ty deci­sion. Thomas was imme­di­ate­ly released from prison.
See The fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against Ira Thomas/​at the link pro­vid­ed above.

But there is more, it is impor­tant to bring some of these facts to light after the for­mer Immigrant Les Green attempt­ed to slime the natives in the for­mer Colony. According to the report­ing, there was a sig­nif­i­cant amount of at least low-lev­el cor­rup­tion at Begravia Police Station at the time. Belgravia Police Station is close to Harrods, owned by Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed did favors for Begravia-based police offi­cers. Police offi­cers returned the favors. Indeed, there was already an anti-cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion at that time into the so-called ‘Hamper Squad’, a group of Belgravia-based offi­cers who would arrest and harass any­one, includ­ing his own employ­ees, sus­pect­ed of aid­ing and abet­ting his bit­ter busi­ness ene­my, Lonrho tycoon ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The greedy offi­cers had a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of free ham­pers and huge dis­counts on Harrods goods. Indeed, one hon­est offi­cer, Bob Loftus, gave the anti-cor­rup­tion unit the actu­al names of police offi­cers who had accept­ed these bribes. No police offi­cer, how­ev­er, was ever pros­e­cut­ed for these crim­i­nal offens­es.
At the time, Al-Fayed owned the now-defunct satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, Punch. Officers also leaked details of the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion to Punch, prompt­ing a leak inquiry. 
.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….……
I won­der how Les Green could have missed these acts of cor­rup­tion? Even more sig­nif­i­cant, how could Hamish Campbell not be aware of these crimes being com­mit­ted by his col­leagues at the Begravia station?

But Hamish Campbell, whose career has more ques­tion marks than answers, is in Jamaica as we speak. His job as Assistant Commissioner of INDECOM is to weed out dirty cops from the JCF.
Now, remem­ber that as the Investigating offi­cer, Hamish Campbell’s inves­ti­ga­tions sud­den­ly turned up a speck of firear­m’s residue said to have been ‘found’ in a coat pock­et that oth­er offi­cers had already searched thor­ough­ly in a case which was seven(7) months old when he took over the Investigations.
Either Hamish Campbell is a supe­ri­or super sleuth or Hamish Campbell has skele­tons in his clos­et we need to unearth.
If the Jill Dando inves­ti­ga­tions are any­thing to go by, the arrest and con­vic­tion of an inno­cent man and his sub­se­quent exon­er­a­tion, then the lat­ter inter­pre­ta­tions about Hamish Campbell is more on point.
Barry Bulsara was alleged­ly [fit­ted up], British lex­i­con, for fram­ing an accused, in a case in which Hamish Campbell was the chief inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer. Barry Bulsara was acquit­ted after spend­ing 7 years in prison for a crime he did not com­mit.
What part if any, did Hamish Campbell play in fit­ting up Barry Bulsara?

Hamish Campbell is now a Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM, one of the many agen­cies tasked with over­sight of Jamaica’s Security Forces.
I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe Terrence Williams is a pseu­do [tit­u­lar] head of INDECOM. I believe that he is at the helm of INDECOM because it would seem too much of an, in your face insult to the nation to bring in an immi­grant(Hamish Campbell), and make him head of a gov­ern­ment agency.
Terrence Williams polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and his bel­li­cose anti-police per­sona, makes him the ide­al can­di­date to be a tit­u­lar head.
Nevertheless, we have seen noth­ing in the Career path of Hamish Campbell which would cause the Jamaican Government to bring him in and make him an inves­ti­ga­tor and deci­sion mak­er over our police sol­diers and cor­rec­tions officers.

The recent deci­sion of a sev­en-per­son jury in the supreme court last week to free two police offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ed and charged By Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell seems in line with Hamish Campbell’s his­to­ry.
Which is to man­u­fac­ture evi­dence, coerce wit­ness­es to lie and to con­coct false evi­dence on which to [fit-up] inno­cent peo­ple for crimes they have not com­mit­ted.
Quite inter­est­ing­ly INDECOM seems to now have a fas­ci­na­tion with firearm residue and have gone to great lengths to bring in for­eign so-called experts. While the police defen­dants and their legal teams have no pow­er or resources to vet their resumes.
With close to 2’000 homi­cides each year in Jamaica the Jamaican Government brings in zero for­eign experts to con­vict the mur­der­ers.
INDECOM brings in for­eign experts to tes­ti­fy in an effort to try and con­vict our hard work­ing poor­ly com­pen­sat­ed police offi­cers.
Long before the so-called [death squad] case was even brought, we received numer­ous reports that INDECOM was induc­ing and coerc­ing alleged wit­ness­es to lie in order to con­vict the offi­cers.
Clearly, a jury saw through the lies and those sev­en Jamaicans sent a pow­er­ful mes­sage for jus­tice and the rule of law.
Unfortunately for Jamaica, Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell are still in their jobs. Neither of these hacks has been sched­uled to answer for what occurred with the evi­dence in this case.
This Administration and the one it suc­ceed­ed has insist­ed that INDECOM is answer­able to a select com­mit­tee of the Parliament.
We have seen no evi­dence that either Terrence Williams or Hamish Campbell will be hauled before that com­mit­tee to explain the alle­ga­tions which have swirled around this par­tic­u­lar inves­ti­ga­tion from day one.
The jury has done its job, but don’t hold your breath for the politi­cians to do theirs.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

In an age when we ought to know bet­ter, the desire to attract clicks on their web­sites and to sell news­pa­pers tran­scend­ed deco­rum, and hon­est report­ing.
After all, the sub­ject they were slan­der­ing were the whip­ping boys of the tiny Island Nation of 2.7 mil­lion.
Who cares about defama­tion and slan­der when the police are their tar­gets? So they ran with the blar­ing head­lines for months and months.
“DEATH SQUAD COPS CHARGED WITH MURDER BY INDECOM“
There was no pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, or worse yet who cared about whether they were inno­cent, there is no need to use the word “ALLEGED”.

And so it went for Detective Corporal Kevin Adams and Constable Jerome Whyte , tarred and feath­ered, slan­dered and defamed as state-sanc­tioned mer­ce­nar­ies of death.
They were dragged through the mer­ci­less maze of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, forced to deal with the lies of their for­mer col­league the infa­mous con­sta­ble Collis Chucky Brown now doing life after cozy­ing up to Terrence Williams and admit­ting to crimes believ­ing he would get immu­ni­ty. The offi­cers had no abil­i­ty to defend them­selves.
Anyone unfa­mil­iar with the intri­ca­cies of this case would nev­er guess that the two were offi­cers of the law. For the sup­posed inves­ti­ga­tors at the over-zeal­ous INDECOM who coerced wit­ness­es to lie and fab­ri­cate evi­dence against these two offi­cers, the end would jus­ti­fy the means. Convicting these offi­cers was all that mat­tered.
It did not mat­ter that these were men who went out and placed their lives on the line to pro­tect and defend. It did not mat­ter that as for­mer National Security Minister Dudley Thompson said in the 70’s, no angels died at Green Bay. INDECOM was out for blood and the com­plic­it Media was a will­ing part­ner in the smear of the two offi­cers.
It did not mat­ter that both offi­cers main­tained that their actions were jus­ti­fied as they car­ried out their duties that day.

The offi­cers were charged with Murder of Anthony (Toby) Trought, the pros­e­cu­tion alleged that they killed the deceased in cold blood. The offi­cers main­tained they act­ed in self-defense. But such is Jamaica when the nation asks offi­cers to step between mind­less killers and the soci­ety, when they act they face the prospect of a mur­der charge even with the absence of [mal­ice]a key com­po­nent to prove mur­der.
The two offi­cers were not the only ones overzeal­ous­ly charged with mur­der. The zealot Terrence Williams and the imposter from Scotland yard Hamish Campbell who failed to inves­ti­gate his col­leagues prop­er­ly when they were alleged to have framed a black man of mur­der charges had much larg­er designs.
Thirteen oth­er offi­cers were caught up in the web of deceit, lies and false tes­ti­monies which was the heart of the pros­e­cu­tion’s case.
Detective Corporal Adams was already exon­er­at­ed in the killing of one accused last January. After being inves­ti­gat­ed and charged by the very same Terrence Williams and his cronies.

And so today, INDECOM’s web of lies, zealotry and anti-police ven­om was evis­cer­at­ed in the Supreme Court, as a jury of sev­en Jamaicans returned a ver­dict of not guilty after delib­er­at­ing for just over half an hour.
This case is more than just INDECOM, an out of con­trol agency paid by tax­pay­ers. It is about the lead­ers of that Agency, their hatred for the police and the pow­ers giv­en to that agency which is used as an instru­ment of revenge.
In the mean­time, the offi­cers were going through their ordeal the crim­i­nals in Clarendon have filled the space, killing any­one who dares to cross them, includ­ing shoot­ing Police Officers.
The Jury of sev­en con­sci­en­tious Jamaicans saw through the web of deceit and lies and returned a resound­ing unan­i­mous ver­dict for jus­tice.
All we can hope for is that that con­sci­en­tious­ness will mutate through­out the law-abid­ing pop­u­la­tion and spark a move­ment, but I will not hold my breath.
Even after the two offi­cers were found [NOT] guilty, the com­plic­it Gleaner head­lines blared the same defam­a­to­ry sludge “Not Guilty…Clarendon ‘Death Squad’ Cops Freed Of Murder”.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

We are excit­ed that we will now be doing Podcasts along with our reg­u­lar blogs as we con­tin­ue to com­mu­ni­cate with you, even as we are remind­ed that we must acqui­esce to the times and the vary­ing ways in which you want to con­sume infor­ma­tion.
We hope that you will give us feed­back so that we may be able to work to make this ven­ture bet­ter and more pleas­ant for you our subscribers. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. He is also a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge.

Having heard the Minister of National Security address­ing the pep­per-spray­ing inci­dent of for­mer Deputy Superintendent of Police Altamont (Parro ) Campbell by the police, I was stunned that the Minister would pub­licly offer an opin­ion in his capac­i­ty as Minister of National Security while the inci­dent was fresh and still under inves­ti­ga­tion.
More con­se­quen­tial to him­self I thought, was the fact that the Minister would offer opin­ions with­out the req­ui­site knowl­edge of the laws and the(RT, Act) Road Traffic Act in par­tic­u­lar.
The Minister, a med­ical Doctor, is not a lawyer or police offi­cer.
He isn’t a for­mer police offi­cer either, So the Minister for all intents and pur­pos­es, is no more, no less, than an aver­age cit­i­zen on this issue. Chang says the Senior cop did not behave appro­pri­ate­ly. He says it’s the type of behav­ior not­ed among politi­cians and oth­ers who feel they are above the law.
The National Security Minister says it’s the Senior cop’s aggres­sive behav­ior that caused the on-duty police­man to use the pep­per spray.
I was with the min­is­ter on the need to obey the laws and par­tic­u­lar­ly when he ref­er­enced politi­cians and oth­ers in the soci­ety who believe they are above the laws.
Nevertheless, his assess­ment on what tran­spired is a rapid depar­ture from what I and count­less oth­ers saw on the video and my under­stand­ing of the Road Traffic Act.

The min­is­ter has made some mis­steps includ­ing liken­ing the police to glo­ri­fied secu­ri­ty guards, and not defend­ing the cops when he need­ed to since he took office. I believe that the Minister’s attempt to defend the offi­cer in this case, may be an attempt to ingra­ti­ate him­self with the police after his pre­vi­ous mis­steps.
And so the Minister has found him­self run­ning pro­tec­tion for com­mis­sion­er of police Antony Anderson who is him­self not a police offi­cer or lawyer and so he can­not respond to issues of this nature with any degree of author­i­ty either, with­out embar­rass­ing himself.

Neither sce­nar­ios of the Minister run­ning pro­tec­tion for Commissioner Anderson, nor Commissioner Anderson play­ing it safe so as not to embar­rass him­self, absolves the so-called Police high com­mand, which has incom­pe­tent­ly failed once again to be out front on this, as it has on so many oth­er issues.
The Police has an infor­ma­tion arm which is some­thing which it nev­er had dur­ing my brief stint in the late ’80s to ear­ly ’90s. Why was there no offi­cial state­ment from the inept police high com­mand?
Why did the Commissioner of Police hide from the media when he could have stepped in front of the micro­phones and giv­en a gener­ic state­ment like the following.

[We take note of the inci­dent involv­ing one of our offi­cers and a mem­ber of the pub­lic”. “We have pro­to­cols in place to ensure the safe­ty of the pub­lic when they come in con­tact with our offi­cers, at the same time, we ful­ly appre­ci­ate the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances under which our offi­cers are asked to per­form their duties. As a con­se­quence, we ask the pub­lic to allow the process to play out and the inves­ti­ga­tion to come to a con­clu­sion.
We promise that the process will be fair to all par­ties as we are bound to pro­tect the pub­lic, while ensur­ing the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of our officers.]

The fore­gone was a gener­ic state­ment we draft­ed which the Commissioner of police could have made to the media or send his media per­son out to make.
It would indi­cate to a skep­ti­cal pub­lic that the lethar­gic police were not asleep at the wheel.
At the same time, Deputy Commissioner of Police Selvin Hay who was appoint­ed Inspector General of the JCF told the media that he has not done an inven­to­ry to see whether solu­tions are avail­able, after pep­per spray has been employed, but he said the High Command will be rolling out a suite of less-lethal weapons to help police main­tain law and order. This is like­ly to include more pep­per spray, tasers, batons and hand­cuffs. “Everything is being looked at, so if there is not suf­fi­cient, then we will cer­tain­ly look at where they are need­ed, because there is nev­er ever any plan to put the offi­cer out there, both for him to be at risk and for him to be at risk to the cit­i­zen,” he said.
Of course, being a part of the high com­mand Hay could not avoid stuff­ing his foot all the way into his own mouth.
Quote; A lot of peo­ple just jump on the word ‘train­ing’ as if we have this Police College that trains peo­ple to be dis­re­spect­ful and unpro­fes­sion­al and uncon­scionable.”
“Nobody trains any­body to shoot with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or to spray some­body with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; that is not what train­ing does. It is a super­vi­so­ry régime that needs to be improved and peo­ple being held account­able. That is what needs to be improved.”

I beg to dif­fer, it is about train­ing. Supervisory break­downs are about train­ing your own atti­tude indi­cates it is about train­ing.
In every instance that there is a break­down of estab­lished pro­to­cols train­ing has to be re-eval­u­at­ed to see what can be fine-tuned or done dif­fer­ent­ly.
But Haye’ com­ment is typ­i­cal of a [so-called high com­mand] which has con­sis­tent­ly seen itself as dif­fer­ent and detached from the offi­cers on the front line.
As I have said maybe a thou­sand times, get rid of some of the Selvin Hayes and give me a good con­sta­ble deter­mined to serve the pub­lic, and I feel a lot bet­ter any day.

This man is report­ed to have tak­en his own life after arriv­ing home and find­ing his girl­friend with anoth­er man.
This unfor­tu­nate inci­dent occurred in St. Thomas. As more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will make it available.

By now, every per­son and their moth­er have seen this unfor­tu­nate video. I was sur­prised at the esca­la­tion of this inci­dent, but I will be con­strained in what I say here as this inci­dent is fresh and still under inves­ti­ga­tion. I know Parro Campbell; I worked along­side Parro Campbell, he is my friend in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure. I trust­ed him with my life.
With that said, I will try my best to be objec­tive and treat Mister Campbell as every Jamaican cit­i­zen ought to be treat­ed when the police stop them.
It is also impor­tant to remem­ber that we do not know what tran­spired before the young son of mis­ter Campbell start­ed rolling the cam­era. As such, we should look at the demeanor of the offi­cer and the motorist, mis­ter Campbell.
There was no yelling going on by either actor. As we heard, mis­ter Campbell’s son con­ced­ed, his dad had over­tak­en a line of vehi­cles, not nec­es­sar­i­ly an infrac­tion if it is done safe­ly and in a place where he had a clear line of vision, and is allowed to over­take.
Nevertheless, it clear­ly was enough to get mis­ter Campbell pulled over by the officer.

Now, I am a for­mer police offi­cer long removed from enforc­ing the laws, so where I may mis­in­ter­pret the laws, please do not be too harsh with the cussing.
If the offi­cer asked the motorist for his dri­ver’s license and the motorist says he does not have it on him. He should ask if the motorist has any oth­er form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by which he may be iden­ti­fied.
If the motorist does not, he must pro­duce the reg­is­tra­tion and proof of insur­ance. The offi­cer would inquire whether the motorist is the reg­is­tered own­er of the vehi­cle. If the motorist answers in the affir­ma­tive, the offi­cer would then ask for his name and date of birth and match it against the insur­ance and reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments’ infor­ma­tion. The offi­cer then goes ahead and writes the citation/​s for which the motorist was ini­tial­ly pulled over.
It is impor­tant that as long as the motorist does not obstruct the offi­cer, by not sup­ply­ing the oth­er doc­u­ments, (a‑la, insur­ance cert., reg­is­tra­tion, etc.), then the motorist has (5) days to pro­duce his dri­ver’s license to a police sta­tion of his con­ve­nience. Those are the dic­tates of the Road Traffic Act.

So let’s go back to the video; the offi­cer asked the motorist for his dri­ver’s license and was told the motorist does not have one on him.
Several things went wrong as the inci­dent esca­lat­ed out of con­trol. Still, I will not lit­i­gate the video because I believe there is one stick­ing point here that negates every­thing else.
The offi­cer went from ask­ing for the motorist dri­ver’s license to threatening.……Arrest.
It seems to me that the motorist, a for­mer police offi­cer, knew that the offi­cer had erred and was humor­ing the uni­formed offi­cer because he knew that the offi­cer real­ly had no pow­er of arrest on this issue. My per­son­al knowl­edge of the motorist tells me that mis­ter Campbell would have jok­ing­ly shown the offi­cer the error of his ways giv­en time in typ­i­cal fash­ion.
This brings me to the point I want to make. An offi­cer is most effec­tive, not when he is the most deter­mined; even though I respect a deter­mined offi­cer, he is most effec­tive when he is right on the law he is enforc­ing.
Since this inci­dent, I have read hun­dreds of com­ments and heard dozens of points of view from past and present mem­bers; I have come away even more con­vinced than before that we are not train­ing our police in a way that is com­men­su­rate way the com­plex­i­ties of the times.
If the oth­er con­sta­ble on the scene knew the traf­fic law, he should have pulled his col­league aside and walk him back from his imme­di­ate demand that the motorist exit his vehi­cle.
Obviously, he was­n’t up to speed on his pow­ers under the law either, or he did not have the esprit de corps to care about the pro­ceed­ings. He was basi­cal­ly a dis­in­ter­est­ed par­ty, which is equal­ly as dan­ger­ous as the igno­rance of the (RT Act) dis­played in that unfor­tu­nate video record­ing.
As we get clos­er to robot­ic cops enforc­ing traf­fic laws in the pow­er­ful indus­tri­al nations, we must equip our human offi­cers so that they do not find them­selves in sit­u­a­tions like this one.
There will be a gazil­lion opin­ions on who did what, or what should have been done differently,(mine includ­ed), that’s okay, but at the end of it all, this mat­ter rests on the (RT Act), not on our opin­ions.
An offi­cer can­not go from request­ing a motorist’s dri­ver’s license to threat­en­ing arrest. More and more cit­i­zens are becom­ing more and more edu­cat­ed on the laws; they under­stand the pro­tec­tions they have under the laws, so the police officer*must* be ful­ly con­ver­sant of his pow­ers when he deals with the pub­lic.

**********************
Since this arti­cle was first pub­lished, addi­tion­al research has revealed that a new Road Traffic Act has been draft­ed to replace the old one.
The new Road Traffic Bill, which will repeal and replace the exist­ing 1938 Act, was passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday (February 6 – 2018).
Offenses under the Bill include: dri­ving with­out required motor vehi­cle insur­ance cov­er­age ($20,000); dri­ving a motor vehi­cle with­out being the hold­er of a per­mit or driver’s license ($40,000); fail­ure of the dri­ver to obey traf­fic light ($24,000); loud nois­es with­in silence zones and fail­ure to wear a pro­tec­tive hel­met ($5,000); fail­ure to com­ply with traf­fic signs ($10,000); and fail­ure to stop at pedes­tri­an cross­ings ($12,000).
It is not ful­ly clear whether the new law is already in effect, although we have been informed that it isn’t. However, we have been unable to inde­pen­dent­ly con­firm whether it is, in fact, in effect. If it is in effect, it does put the uni­formed offi­cer in a dif­fer­ent and bet­ter light.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police cor­po­ral, busi­ness own­er, researcher, blog­ger, and a black achiev­er hon­oree. He is the cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

OUR HISTORY OF LIONIZING MURDEROUS PUNKS FROM RIGEN TO THREE-FINGER ‑JACK, SANDOKAN TO NATTY MORGAN, JIM BROWN TO TONY BROWN AND GEORGE FLASH IS WELL DOCUMENTED

CLAUDIE MASSOP, BUCKY MARSHALL,BIYA MITCHELL,BURRY BOY,TONY WELSH, FEATHER MOP, DONOVAN CINQUE, ZACKIE THE HIGH PRIEST, COPPER, SANDOKAN, WALLY DREAD, PETER CUPS, MONKEY STEWBERT, DUBAL, DINAL,WAXIE, BROWN MAN, TANTUDDY , SEXY PAUL, TEDDY PAUL, IAN MASCO, NINEY, GENERAL STARSKY, JIM BROWN, BASKIN, DEVON STAR, TONY BROWN, WATERHOUSE BUNNY, GEORGE PHANG, WESPICK, LENIMENTS CURLY LOCKS, GOLD STREET, CHUBBY DREAD,
DELROY UZI EDWARDS, TEK LIFE, EARL FROWZER, NATTY KUNDA,
NATTY CHRIS, WATER BUGGAH, FIA BUGGAH, COW, EARLY BIRD, JIMMY SPORT, CLAUDIE SHOE, GEORGE FLASH, ZEEKS, MR WONG. DUDDUS.
The list is endless.

If the Police are not allowed to go after the gang­sters and get the guns wher­ev­er the hell they are, because remem­ber, the Prime Minister said police are no longer allowed to kick in doors and arrest crim­i­nals. And when an accused mur­der­er is final­ly brought to court he is giv­en bail and turned loose right away. Worse yet, on the rare occa­sion that these vicious gang­sters are found guilty, they are giv­en a tap on the wrist. And if the gov­ern­ment now wants to expunge their crim­i­nal records, then, what are the peo­ple sup­posed to do?

The cit­i­zens are going to take the law into their own hands, and that is some­thing no one wants.
Government has a duty and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the cit­i­zen­ry. In fact, it is the pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty of any gov­ern­ment from as far back as Medieval rulers who built walls and oth­er for­ti­fi­ca­tions to pro­tect their peo­ple.
Unfortunately, this rather sim­ple real­i­ty has not yet dawned on those on whose shoul­ders it falls to pro­tect the Jamaican peo­ple.
It is not as sim­ple as some police offi­cers turn­ing a blind to far too much, or sell­ing their badges.
It tran­scends some pros­e­cu­tors not aggres­sive­ly pros­e­cut­ing some crimes.
It’s more than just cit­i­zen-leg­is­la­tors not hav­ing the balls to write leg­is­la­tion which is clear and unequiv­o­cal in its resolve against crime, because of course, many of them are crim­i­nal defense lawyers. You know, the law­mak­ers are the law­break­ers?
It is not even just about judges who sul­ly the Bench by tak­ing bribes, or as prod­ucts of their envi­ron­ments, refus­es to sen­tence vio­lent felons to long prison terms.
It is more than the prison offi­cials who allow con­tra­band into the sys­tem and cre­ates through their cor­rup­tion, anoth­er lay­er of crim­i­nal con­duct in the penal sys­tem. Or even let­ting con­vict­ed felons out for days on end while they are sup­posed to be locked up.
It is about all of the fore­gone and then some.
But most of all it is about a col­lec­tive cul­ture which is high­ly tol­er­ant and def­er­en­tial to crim­i­nal and law­less behav­ior.
It is that back­ward think­ing which caused the People’s National Party to send Anthony Brown and George Flash over­seas after they had com­mit­ted numer­ous mur­ders in the ’70s includ­ing the killing of police offi­cers.
Murder is not a statute, it is accord­ing to com­mon law. And so there is no [statute of lim­i­ta­tion], when you kill some­one if you get caught a hun­dred years lat­er you can be pros­e­cut­ed.
The fact that Anthony Brown and George Flash were nev­er pros­e­cut­ed means that some police offi­cers were com­plic­it in destroy­ing the files which should have been used to pros­e­cute them on their return to Jamaica.
Somehow they knew that they would nev­er be held account­able and so they returned with nary a care in the world. 

It is a col­lec­tive nation­al dis­ease of the mind which is unfor­tu­nate­ly cen­tered on demon­strat­ing to crim­i­nals that we care more about them than look­ing after crime vic­tims.
It is a twist­ed and warped psy­che which defaults to empa­thy for crim­i­nals rather than their bro­ken vic­tims.
And so we have to face the real­i­ty from Jamaica House on down, that the way we have dealt with crim­i­nal con­duct has been regres­sive and of itself a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the growth of crime in our coun­try.
There is not a sin­gle con­sci­en­tious Jamaican who could log­i­cal­ly argue that we have not as a nation, ded­i­cat­ed far too much of our ener­gies wor­ry­ing about how we treat dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers than we have spent car­ing about those killed and or those left behind to grieve and suf­fer.
It is kind of a sce­nario in which a kid spills red wine on the white shag car­pet. He had no busi­ness touch­ing and his par­en­t’s wine and the more he tries to clean it up, the worse the car­pet becomes.
He start­ed out doing some­thing which he should­n’t have done, and rather than just stop.….… He con­tin­ues to try to clean up what was start­ed all wrong and does more and more damage.

As a coun­try, we can come to the recog­ni­tion that we are not hav­ing the intend­ed results from our efforts. That’s usu­al­ly a sign that we have been going about our approach to crime all wrong.
I under­stand how dif­fi­cult that can be to accept. In fact, even some who have spent decades in law enforce­ment would rather ques­tion the mes­sen­ger than look at the mes­sage. What we have devel­oped in Jamaica is a far too nuanced approach to law enforce­ment.
We have become the man who with his son was tak­ing their don­key to sell at the mar­ket. You know the sto­ry they lis­tened to every per­son with an opin­ion until they lost the don­key.
There is one way to deal with crim­i­nals. The state must make it clear that those who decide on a life of crime must expect no quar­ter for their actions.
The great­est deter­rent to crime is a no-non­sense puni­tive approach, those who are not deterred soci­ety ought to have a rem­e­dy for them as well.
We have become a crim­i­nal cen­tered soci­ety and part of the rea­son for that is that the entire lead­er­ship of the coun­try at every lev­el have passed through the far left lean­ing doors of the University of the West Indies.
Politicians on both sides think as a mono­lith on every­thing out­side their own rapa­cious desire to sur­vive polit­i­cal­ly.
The lack of [alter­na­tive] crit­i­cal-think­ing, from the world­view derived from the UWI, has con­fined the nation to a bunch of auto­crats at every lev­el who are mono­lith­ic in their think­ing.
They are pre­oc­cu­pied with arrang­ing the deck chairs on the sink­ing Titanic, instead of ready­ing the lifeboats.

By MARK JOSEPH STERN

Qualified immu­ni­ty is a plague on the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, a made-up rule that allows count­less gov­ern­ment offi­cials to vio­late Americans’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights with impuni­ty. On Tuesday, how­ev­er, the 6^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a rare deci­sion deny­ing qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty to a law enforce­ment offi­cer who alleged­ly engaged in hor­rif­ic mis­con­duct that, in oth­er con­texts, might con­sti­tute sex­u­al assault. The case high­lights just how appalling an official’s malfea­sance must be for his vic­tim to receive a sem­blance of jus­tice in court. The ghast­ly chain of events in Campbell v. Mackwere set off when Kevin Campbell, a black man, drove past Daniel Mack, a white police offi­cer in Allen Park, Michigan. Campbell was dri­ving his wife’s new mini­van, which had a tem­po­rary license plate clear­ly dis­played on the back win­dow in com­pli­ance with the law. But Mack pulled him over, osten­si­bly for dri­ving with­out a license plate. Campbell revealed that he did not have a driver’s license, but hand­ed Mack his state ID card, as well as the new vehicle’s paper­work. Mack ordered him out of the car.

As soon as Campbell exit­ed the car, Mack hand­cuffed and frisked him, then put him in the back of his cruis­er. Campbell com­plained that the hand­cuffs hurt his wrists; in response, the offi­cer alleged­ly tight­ened them and said, “that’s the loos­est they’re going to get.” He also accused Campbell of steal­ing the mini­van. Mack put his police dog direct­ly into Campbell’s car, then searched it him­self — all with­out any appar­ent prob­a­ble cause.
The offi­cer then took Campbell to the police sta­tion, where he uncuffed him. Campbell not­ed that the hand­cuffs were too tight and showed Mack the bruis­es they had left. Mack told him that “hand­cuffs leave marks on every­body.” (Campbell lat­er received treat­ment for his dam­aged wrists at a hos­pi­tal.) Mack then said he believed Campbell was hid­ing drugs and need­ed to per­form a strip search, though he did not attempt to obtain a war­rant. The offi­cer put Campbell in a cage and told him to take off his pants.

Campbell object­ed, but Mack alleged­ly direct­ed him to “get naked” and “drop his draws,” telling him: “You’re in a hold­ing facil­i­ty. You’re get­ting naked.” Asserting that he detect­ed “a nar­cot­ic odor,” Mack told Campbell: “We’re get­ting down to the nit­ty-grit­ty.” Campbell said that was “not pos­si­ble” because he did not do drugs, but Mack insist­ed that he was hid­ing nar­cotics, declar­ing: “Your pants are unzipped. I’m gonna find it one way or anoth­er, all right. So we can do this the easy way or the hard way. What do you got in your draw­ers?” (Campbell denies that his pants were unzipped.)
Mack then pulled down Campbell’s pants and under­wear, bent down, and exam­ined Campbell’s gen­i­tals. Campbell repeat­ed­ly asked the offi­cer to stop and told him, “Nah, you can’t do that, man,” but Mack respond­ed, “Yes, I can, yes, I can,” and esca­lat­ed the search. Mack alleged­ly felt under­neath Campbell’s gen­i­tals, telling anoth­er offi­cer he had drugs “tucked under­neath his balls” or “tucked in his fuck­ing ass crack.” Campbell claims that Mack also “grabbed” and “pulled” his tes­ti­cles and “stuck his fin­ger inside of my anus.” Eventually, the offi­cer gave up and told Campbell: “You can keep it,” refer­ring to these puta­tive drugs. No nar­cotics were ever found.

Mack con­tests Campbell’s ver­sion of the events, con­tend­ing that, among oth­er things, he nev­er insert­ed his fin­ger into Campbell’s anus. A cam­era cap­tured the inci­dent, but the video qual­i­ty is poor, and the offi­cers posi­tioned them­selves in a way that blocked a clear image of the search. The video does, how­ev­er, show Campbell say­ing, “Why are you putting your fin­ger in my [anus]?” and the offi­cer respond­ing at one point, “Because you have it tucked in your [body].”At this stage, though, the fac­tu­al dis­pute doesn’t much mat­ter. Campbell sim­ply wants the case to go to tri­al so he can prove his claims to a jury. He is suing Mack for vio­lat­ing his First and Fourth Amendment rights, accus­ing him of retal­i­at­ing against his pro­tect­ed speech and per­form­ing an unrea­son­able search and seizure. But Mack raised qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, argu­ing that his actions, as alleged by Campbell, did not vio­late any “clear­ly estab­lished” con­sti­tu­tion­al right. If Mack had received qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, Campbell’s case would nev­er go to tri­al; it would be dis­missed, because Mack would be shield­ed from liability.

But in an opin­ion by Judge Eric Clay, the 6^th Circuit refused to grant Mack qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. It is clear­ly estab­lished, Clay wrote, that an offi­cer “needs either prob­a­ble cause or rea­son­able sus­pi­cion to con­duct a traf­fic stop.” Mack had nei­ther. It is also clear­ly estab­lished that an offi­cer may not retal­i­ate when a sus­pect con­tests “his or her alleged­ly unlaw­ful treat­ment.” The First Amendment pro­tects a suspect’s right to com­plain. Yet Mack did just that, alleged­ly tight­en­ing Campbell’s hand­cuffs and per­form­ing the body cav­i­ty search in an increas­ing­ly “aggres­sive, intim­i­dat­ing, and hos­tile man­ner” because Campbell protest­ed. Under well-estab­lished 6^th Circuit prece­dent, Mack’s actions, as recount­ed by Campbell, were obvi­ous­ly unlaw­ful, so Mack must fight them at tri­al, and can­not hide behind qual­i­fied immunity. 

This out­come is encour­ag­ing, though it’s unfor­tu­nate that the court issued the deci­sion “unpub­lished,” mean­ing it will not serve as prece­dent in future cas­es. (Appeals courts can decide to keep their rul­ings unpub­lished, a con­tro­ver­sial but com­mon prac­tice.) The rul­ing is also a reminder of the vagaries of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty: In the hands of a dif­fer­ent court, it eas­i­ly could’ve gone the oth­er way. Judges have grant­ed qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty to one offi­cer who shot an inno­cent man in his own home, anoth­er who let a police dog maul a home­less per­son, and even a social work­er who strip-searched and pho­tographed a 4‑year-old girl with­out con­sent or a war­rant. The doc­trine has been invoked over and over again to insu­late police from con­se­quences when they shoot civil­ians. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has decried the Supreme Court’s “sanc­tion­ing” of this “ ‘shoot first, think lat­er’ approach to policing.”

In recent years, a cross-ide­o­log­i­cal coali­tion of advo­cates — includ­ing the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cato Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, Americans for Prosperity, the Institute for Justice, and Public Justice — have urged the Supreme Court to scale back or end qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. They argue that qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty is itself unlaw­ful, or at least extend­ed far beyond what the law per­mits. It is, after all, a judge-made rule, unteth­ered from any statute or con­sti­tu­tion­al com­mand.
The Supreme Court has not yet agreed to recon­sid­er its jurispru­dence in this area. And until it does, only cas­es as egre­gious as Campbell’s — where the officer’s alleged actions would, in any oth­er con­text, con­sti­tute crim­i­nal sex­u­al assault—might defeat qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. Courts, mean­while, can almost always pre­tend that an officer’s abus­es don’t run afoul of “clear­ly estab­lished” law; con­sid­er a recent deci­sion from the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hold­ing that the police did not vio­late clear­ly estab­lished law when they stole mon­ey from sus­pects. Until SCOTUS shrinks the scope of qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty, rul­ings like Campbell v. Mack will remain the excep­tion to the rule. 

This sto­ry first appeared @
https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​1​9​/​0​6​/​m​i​c​h​i​g​a​n​-​l​a​w​s​u​i​t​-​o​f​f​i​c​e​r​-​d​a​n​i​e​l​-​m​a​c​k​-​i​l​l​e​g​a​l​-​b​o​d​y​-​c​a​v​i​t​y​-​s​e​a​r​c​h​.​h​tml

As the sense­less blood­shed con­tin­ue across Jamaica, a male ven­dor and a woman were mur­dered in the Old Harbor Market yes­ter­day at about 2:10 pm.

According to sup­posed eye­wit­ness­es, the two were gunned down by two men who then ran away.
They were both pro­nounced dead at the Spanish Town Hospital.
These kinds of brazen day­light mur­ders have become the norm as gun­men kill whomev­er they chose and sim­ply walk away with­out any seem­ing fear of the authorities.

We take no plea­sure in show­ing these images but we are des­per­ate for action on crime in Jamaica. We hope that our peo­ple’s sen­si­bil­i­ties will be shocked and they will be forced into action.
We can no longer sweep these killings under the rug and pre­tend that they are not occur­ring.
We ful­ly under­stand the con­cerns of those who say we should not show these images, but we also appre­ci­ate that we have been omit­ting to show these images and peo­ple are still dying. In fact, more and more peo­ple are dying, so not show­ing them have not worked to stop the blood­shed.
We need our lead­ers to be held account­able for their lack of con­se­quen­tial action on the nation’s crime front. 

People are being asked to avoid Waltham Park road and Maxfield Avenue.
According to ear­ly reports, the so-called Don who goes by the name[Bagga]was alleged­ly gunned down not long ago.
More to come as soon as infor­ma­tion becomes available.

Credible reports being relayed to us is that Six (6) peo­ple have been shot in Greenvale Manchester in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing.
We have been informed that the Greenvale Gang-leader Shane McDonald has also been shot.
We are told that McDonald is under­go­ing surgery at this time.
This is ear­ly report­ing, we are await­ing con­fir­ma­tion and updates to this report­ing, and as soon as more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will pass it on to you.

From Contributor:
Minister Joan Gumbs
You may respond to Minister Gumbs at ministergumbs@​howyalivinnow.​org or leave her a response in the com­ments sec­tion below.

I n what has become a pat­tern of Jamaican men killing their wives and some­times tak­ing their own, the lat­est news of a Detective Corporal who kills his wife for “tor­ment­ing” his life is par­tic­u­lar­ly unset­tling. Not only because of the strange­ness of the account, but also the insen­si­tiv­i­ty of the media and pun­dits for­ward­ing and replay­ing the hus­band’s con­fes­sion on social media. According to var­i­ous news sources, the offi­cer was hav­ing “issues” with his wife, and could­n’t tek it nuh more. But instead of walk­ing away, he chose to shoot her at their Tower Isle home in the parish of St. Mary. 

My grand­moth­er always said there are three sides to every sto­ry, and dead man tells no tales. So, Jennifer Hardy Lawrence is not around to tell her side of the sto­ry. how­ev­er, my take on the whole bizarre affair is not to place blame at the feet of this woman. She may not be inno­cent. She may have done all that the media is report­ing she has done (based on the hus­band’s social media con­fes­sion). But it sad­dens me to hear my own gen­der speak­ing ill of the dead – espe­cial­ly one of our own. “She had it com­ing” and “mi nuh sor­ry fi har,“are not appro­pri­ate respons­es to this inci­dent. In a male-dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety where news of behead­ing and female muti­la­tions are not uncom­mon, the last thing a woman needs is for her sis­ters to turn on her and defend her killer. The hus­band is not the vic­tim here – regard­less of what twist and turn the sto­ry takes. We don’t know what took place on that fate­ful Tuesday morn­ing because we weren’t there. Mrs Lawrence is not around to tell us, and we cer­tain­ly can­not take her hus­band’s account of events as gospel. What we do know is that Kirk Lawrence was a police offi­cer who has to work every day under extreme pres­sure in high-volatile com­mu­ni­ties. If the cor­po­ral kills his wife for tor­ment­ing his life, then we have to assume he, him­self, was under severe stress. 

PTSD is not a con­di­tion expe­ri­enced only by our sol­diers when they go to war. It is very real among our local police offi­cers. One would have to be in the sit­u­a­tion to tru­ly under­stand what it feels like to go into a com­mu­ni­ty where gun­men can hide out in the most inno­cent of places. You are going in blind. The “friend­lies”, i.e. the shop­keep­er, house­wife, youth on the cor­ner play­ing domi­noes, et al, can either be gun­men and women, or are enablers for these crim­i­nals. Let’s not fool our­selves. These mur­der­ers, rapists, rob­bers, et al have moth­ers, sis­ters, daugh­ters, wives, and girl­friends. And the truth is, many times the police have no idea who is whom. They see a per­son reach­ing into his or her pock­et, they don’t know if a gun or bub­blegum will emerge. Do you have any idea how stress­ful that can be? I don’t know if reg­u­lar men­tal check­ups are done for the men in red. But if not, it is time that we start doing as much for them as the men in green. 

Based on the voice note mes­sage he alleged­ly left behind, he did not plan to “face judg­ment” for his crime, sug­gest­ing a mur­der-sui­cide attempt. However, his col­leagues got to the house before he could make his chil­dren orphans, and he is now in cus­tody. In the USA and UK (from whom we adopt many poli­cies and pro­ce­dures) the police offi­cers under­go peri­od­ic psych eval­u­a­tions. After an inci­dent, they are relieved of their duties until they have been cleared by a psy­chi­a­trist. This needs to be imple­ment­ed in JA. There are too many accounts of killings by our police offi­cers, who have sworn to pro­tect our cit­i­zens, not kill them – even if they are mar­ried to them! Sincere prayers and con­do­lences to the bereaved of this woman, espe­cial­ly the chil­dren who will have to spend the rest of their lives deal­ing with the knowl­edge that their father killed their moth­er. This is a time to show sup­port, not play the blame game. HYLN? What is your take on this sto­ry? Do you believe the hus­band? Do you believe he could have walked away even if the wife was guilty of all the alle­ga­tions? What about the chil­dren? Let us know what you’re think­ing in the com­ments box below.

Early uncon­firmed reports indi­cate that the Man who video­taped the Sunday morn­ing inci­dent In May Pen Clarendon (a bar­ber) was just murdered. 

Other uncon­firmed reports have indi­cat­ed that the dece­dent is not the per­son claimed in the ini­tial report­ing. We await the offi­cial report from the police as to the iden­ti­ty of the deceased man.

More to come.